The Audacity of Sara Grayson
A Book Review of The Audacity of Sara Grayson by Joani Elliot
Thank you Netgalley, Post Hill Press and Joani Elliott for my gifted eARC in exchange for my honest review.
Pub release date: 25 May 2021
A couple of things about entering the world of Sara Grayson, this was a Netgalley ARC, which can be hit or miss when transferring to the Kindle app.. in this case, it was a miss, and the formatting got a little ugly. I can live with that! The only information I could get was the percentage of book read and estimated time until the end of the book (no chapters, no page numbers, etc.)
So when it said it would take me somewhere around SEVEN hours to finish this book, and it took several pages to register on my percentage read, I started getting very concerned. Amazon says the hardcover is 400 pages. Whew.
Now here's where the surprises started coming in. Nothing dragged! If I had to go in and cut 100-150 pages of Sara Grayson, I'd never know where to start and what to cut. My continued thought was – maybe this should've been two books. Keep everything, and make more! (I did see a comment on an Instagram review from Joani Elliott saying to expect more Sara in the future!)
Sara isn't a perfect person. None of us are, but often with fictional characters, especially from the romance/chick-lit genre we expect them to be, or we hate them and move on. She's so self-involved that her mother won't even tell her about her serious relationship. This is the Sara show, a massive pity party of poor Sara. When Sara's mom gets sick with cancer and passes away and leaves her entire legacy and the family's fortune in Sara's hands, it becomes a perfectly believable story of self-discovery.
When I was 25, I found myself life failing and living with my mom in her guest room, making some questionable decisions in an attempt to 'escape.' During this time, Eat Pray Love came out. I grabbed my copy and - like ALL Elizabeth Gilbert reads - spent months reading it. I finished it all while making some hard choices and decisions, with a two-week bus trip around British Columbia, because I couldn't afford Europe, and ultimately changed the entire course of my life. I saw the parallels and took what was meant to be taken.
I related to the Audacity of Sara Grayson so deeply it got creepy at times, including its use of Eat Pray Love to show how douchey Sara's ex is.
I am about to take my second writing class tomorrow because I have an important story to tell (that belongs to my mother). I write social media captions for a living (Cutie Coupons). I am shrouded in self-doubt on if I am capable of writing an actual book. I'm unintentionally self-involved. Hard to admit, but I started to face it around the same time Sara did.
A book about doubt on ability, skill, and worth around writing a book falls in my lap as I struggle with doubt about my ability, skill, and worth to write a book. It's also filled with beautiful and inspirational quotes, yes, please.
It took me about ten days to read The Audacity of Sara Grayson, not just because it's a long read, but because I'm homeschooling, back in school myself, working, and reading other books simultaneously. But that is a long time to spend with a story or character, and I found that I missed her this morning.
I truly loved Sara's dive into self-love, worth and discovery.
I see huge things for Joani Elliot and Sara Grayson in the future and can not wait for another trip into their world.
Synopsis: What happens when your mother’s dying wish becomes your worst nightmare?
What happens when the world’s greatest literary icon dies before she finishes the final book in her best-selling series?
And what happens when she leaves that book in the hands of her unstable, neurotic daughter, who swears she’s not a real writer?
Sara Grayson is a thirty-two-year-old greeting card writer about to land the toughest assignment of her life. Three weeks after the death of her mother—a world-famous suspense novelist—Sara learns that her mother’s dying wish is for her to write the final book in her bestselling series.
Sara has lived alone with her dog, Gatsby, ever since her husband walked out with their Pro Double Waffle Maker and her last shred of confidence. She can’t fathom writing a book for thirty million fans—not when last week’s big win was resetting the microwave clock.
But in a bold move that surprises even herself, Sara takes it on. Against an impossible deadline and a publisher intent on sabotaging her every move, Sara discovers that stepping into her mother’s shoes means stumbling on family secrets she was never meant to find—secrets that threaten her mother’s legacy and the very book she’s trying to create.